Doug Mitchelson at Deutsche Bank said he had expected that GE would have held out for a better price. He asked Comcast executives on a conference call Wednesday morning if they sweetened the deal somehow.

Comcast's chief financial officer, Michael Angelakis, responded that GE's board simply liked that the company could sell its stake earlier than expected. Comcast had bought 51 percent of NBCUniversal in 2011 and was going to buy out the rest from GE gradually, finishing in 2018.

"I think it's a very good deal for them as well," Angelakis said Wednesday. "I think from their standpoint they're going to receive a lot of cash, which we know they're going to deploy to other services. And from our standpoint, I think it was an advantage to accelerate that, and I think we've received a very fair price."

"We think this is an attractive exit price," GE's Chief Financial Officer, Keith Sherin, said on a separate call.

Comcast Chief Executive Brian Roberts told the Associated Press after the deal was announced Tuesday that the company decided it made sense to buy GE's stake now because the improved performance of the NBC broadcast network and cable-TV programming made it more likely the price would rise in the future.

NBCUniversal operates the NBC and Telemundo broadcast networks, local TV stations, cable channels such as USA, SyFy and CNBC, the Universal Pictures movie studios and theme parks in Florida and California. It generates about a third of the revenue for Comcast, whose larger business is producing the pipes for cable TV, Internet and phone services.